


The Milieu of Consumption

by sackofloveandwater



Series: The Marked [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence Mentioned, Gen, Mentions of Animal Cruelty, Mentions of Rodents, Platonic Breakfast, character piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9315374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sackofloveandwater/pseuds/sackofloveandwater
Summary: The Outsider has interrupted Corvo as he was about to sit down for his early morning breakfast. The one hour he has in a day to himself. Exploration of the relationship the two have.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This came about as an extension to a longer project I'm doing. I might turn this into a series just because I do have scenes involving the other marked characters that aren't really usable and examine other parts of the Outsider's character or parts of that story I find interesting. But for now this is just a oneshot. Enjoy!

The Outsider examined his plate setting superciliously, scanning first eggs, then the marmalade, then the bacon with equal, imperious disdain.

He picked up his fork, turning the utensil in his fingers and flicked his eyes to Corvo.

“What is  _this_?”

“A fork,” he said.

He scowled. “I’m aware of what it  _is_. I’ve been observing humanity for four thousand years. I understand the concept of  _forks_.”

Corvo looked up as exaggeratedly as one could. “Then use it.”

The Outsider continued to stare down at his plate. And his fork. And his glass. And his spoon. And all the other implements one could use for eating. But not moving to eat.

Corvo looked up from his eggs again.

“You did observehow to  _use_  a fork, right?”

“I haven’t had a formal meal in close to two thousand years,” he said, with no small amount of condescension. “The details of the formal dining setting are… somewhat lost to me.”

Corvo snorted. “The Grand Leviathan, outdone by cutlery.”

The Outsider squinted at him, but it did not seem to be out of offense, so Corvo continued to eat his eggs.

“I am not  _outdone_  by it,” he assured Corvo. “I am simply… perplexed by it’s intricacies. For example," he held up a spoon. ”How would I use this?”

“You use it to pickup food,” he said, demonstrating with a flourish on the marmalade, spreading it on his toast.

The Outsider flicked his eyebrows. “Yes, but I have  _three_  of them.”

“Well, just …” Corvo started, and stopped, this was  _his_  meal that was being intruded on, the  _one_ chunk of time in the day that he had set aside for himself. He had no obligation to explain  _any of this_ , "You know what? Don’t worry about it.”

The Outsider blinked very slowly at him. It was difficult to tell what he was thinking precisely, what with him having no pupils at all. But Corvo was fairly certain he was being given a  _look_. He got  _looks_  quite often when he engaged with the court, he had developed a sixth sense for these sorts of things.

“I would much rather engage in another method of dining,” The Outsider said flatly.

“Then do it?”

The Outsider laughed, it was a sharp, sudden sound, like bones cracking. “It can’t be done. Not with these foods.”

Corvo smiled, quietly shaking off his discomfort and looked back down at the sausage on his plate. “You’re telling me you’ve lived four thousand years and you’ve never had scrambled eggs?”

” _Scrambled eggs_  were not something widely indulged in at the time of the Great Burnings.”

“Oh right, I forgot,” Corvo said, smiling his small smile designed for  _small people_. “Last meal. Two thousand years.”

“You’re mocking me,” The Outsider noted, shovelling his eggs about with the prongs of his knife.

Corvo paused, his sausage dissolving on the edge of his tongue. “Mocking’s strong.”

It wasn’t strong.

“It’s not strong,” The Outsider observed dully. “I’m honestly surprised anyone would allow you to be a diplomat,” he gazed at him in the same way he did before, with that long… slow… blink. “But choices are  _choices_  aren’t they?”

“What  _did_  you eat?” Corvo said tightly, cutting into his sausage more fiercely than it deserved.

“Goat,” The Outsider supplied simply. “As well as fruits, vegetables. Rice. Pigeon,” he poked experimentally at the sausage with his fork. “I continue to be fond of oranges and figs. They have not changed much.”

“Ah,” Corvo swallowed his sausage and started cutting at his bacon. Then, belatedly, a realization came to him. “ Wait, you  _are_ fond of oranges?

“Yes, and figs. I eat them often.”

“I thought you just...” Corvo gestured.

“Just,” The Outsider copied his gesture, “ ... _what_?”

Was he being mocked? Corvo shook his head and soldiered through his thought.

“I thought you... ,” Corvo considered the most tactful way to put it. “Didn’t... like that kind of thing.”

“Well,” The Outsider drolled, “I do.”

“Right...”

Corvo sat back in his chair and looked across at the table at the  _god_ sitting opposite to him. Or maybe he wasn’t a god? Did gods eat?

What  _did_ gods eat?

Oranges, apparently.

He stared into his bacon and began cutting it in earnest again.

“When was the last time you had an...orange?” he asked.

The Outsider considered. “Oh... last week?”

Last week, what was he doing last week? Making security changes on Emily’s arrival in Morley.

“Was it... good?”

“Yes,” The Outsider speared a sausage and watched the links curl off the chain one after another after another. “Just the right ripeness.”

Who would sell  _The Outsider_ an orange?

Did he steal it?

“That’s... that’s good.”

The Outsider cut off one sausage from the chain and pop it crosswise into his mouth. “Indeed.”

They chewed in silence for a time, The Outsider quite a bit more… vigorously… than Corvo. He pictured him popping an entire orange in his mouth and… he stared very deliberately at his toast as he took a bite.

“Tell me Corvo,” The Outsider mouthed around his food, “how are the silver mines in Karnaca fairing?”

“Don’t you… already know that?”

The Outsider made a face and swallowed his food in a ritual that Corvo could only describe as disgusting.

He then grabbed the crystal glass of grapefruit juice to his side and slurped half of it down, smacking his lips loudly, more in relief than satisfaction, and continued speaking.

“I know a great deal about a great many places, but I don’t know what  _you know_ ,” The Outsider turned. “So… tell me.”

“Silver is coming in at a fairly consistent rate,” Corvo strained to remember the reports being sent across his desk, the chatting in court. “No strikes.”

The Outsider nodded, waiting.

Corvo waited too. The game had finished and the conversation had certainly moved on.

The Outsider sighed loudly, cutting into another sausage. “You know you  _disappoint_ me. I would have expected more… concern for your homeland.”

“Of course, far be it from me to  _disappoint_ The Grand Leviathan.”

The Outsider squinted at him.

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“I mean that’s... that’s what you’re called.”

He blinked, holding his juice glass dully.

“Isn’t it?”

The Outsider sipped his grapefruit juice, his eyes widening like he had just witnessed the greatest social faux pas of the season.

“Why are you doing that? What did I say?”

“Just be happy you don’t speak whale,” he murmured, taking another sausage up with his fingers and popping half of it into his mouth so it hung, briefly like a cigar.

Corvo stared, his bacon suspended on his fork. And the aristocrats thought he was a mess when he used his dessert spoon to eat his soup…

“But,” The Outsider said, tearing the casing away in a large bite and returning the remains of his sausage to his plate, “to get back on topic. The Serkonian mining industry!”

Corvo supressed an eyeroll. Yet another skill he picked up from court.

“I appreciate your concern," Corvo said flatly. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

Corvo reached for his glass of juice and as he did his teeth hit up against something hard.

He blinked softly and looked down into his hand. His drink had turned into solid ice.

He glanced up and The Outsider was staring at him with his vacuous black eyes, a cold chill surrounding Corvo as The Outsider grabbed the last half of his sausage.

“You know I swear,” The Outsider said, around the bit of meat, “Serkonans are the only ones in this cursed Empires that remember to  _spice_ things. I once met a chef that swore off the use of  _salt._   _Salt_ , Corvo. Can you believe that?”

Corvo stared into his glass momentarily and then placed it back down on the table, sliding it into place.

“But this blood sausage is good,” he said. “Reminds me of home.”

“The Void?” Corvo asked.

“Kazyka.”

Now Corvo  _had_  to laugh. “There’s no such place.”

The Outsider laughed too, and it was the sound of a downpour. Empty and echoing on the roof tiles, dripping into the pitcher on the floor. Cold, cold as your bones.

“Just the same as apples once tasted like honey rod and whales  travelled clear between Gristol and Serkonos, Kazyka once rested prettily on Serkonos’ Northern coast and its most Southern tip,”  he twirled a piece of bacon between his fingers. “Now it’s dead,” he smiled. “And matters to no one  _but_ the dead.”

“If I didn’t know you any better I’d say you were  _sad_.”

“And how well do you know me?” he asked, his dark, insectoid eyes staring into him. “You didn’t know if I liked to eat and you gave me  _food_.”

He dropped his bacon back onto his plate with a strange finality.

“You don’t know if I can  _sleep_. You probably wonder if I cry, drool, bleed,” he clicked his tongue and smiled, all ugly teeth. “Among other things,” Corvo looked away, laughing in derision, but the Outsider kept on  _smirking_. “And I could tell you,” he leaned back into his chair. “But it doesn’t really matter. Because they ultimately don’t matter to  _you_.”

Corvo’s head shifted a little until The Outsider was just off center.  Of  _course_ nothing this man said to him mattered. He was being  _interrupted_ during his  _fucking breakfast_.  

“When I came to you I was nothing more than a means to an end and I think we both understood that,” Corvo’s eyes snapped forward. “You were in a bad way Corvo, I came to you to give you a chance. You took it,” he  _stared_ at him, those teeth on full display, not even attempting to  _hide them_. Disgusting. This man was  _fucking disgusting_.  “Simple as that.”

The Outsider smiled again his teeth coming and going quick as a flash. He looked oddly listless, sardonic. Again, if Corvo didn’t know him any better.

“And don’t misunderstand me,” The Outsider said, throwing his hands up. “I have no parity here. I don’t resent you for things you’ve done. I know my place and I don’t expect things from this world,” he leaned forward, slamming his elbows on the table. “Just don’t pretend to know me.”

Corvo looked off.  _Listen to_ all this. “I could say the same of you.”

“I could take the mark away if you  _asked me_ ,” he bit out. “But even now the prospect fills you with fear. Dread,” his eyes grew wide and Corvo fought against the urge to slip down them. “What if  _Emily_  was in real danger?” His eyes were such  _awful things,_ like the sea or the dark sky. Or the shadows lining the cliffs in the Serkonan Bay that swallowed up ships in the night. “What if there was a  _true threat_? Something steel can’t solve alone?”

 He cocked his head and his brown skin and black eyes made him look like a rat. With beady little rat eyes. A black little rat mouth. And little holes in its little rat head as you bit down on its little rat neck.

 “After all there are so many rats that lurk in the night, so many heads that have to be-”

“ _Stop._ ”

The Outsider leaned back.

“Corvo. Means ‘crow’, correct?”

“I… I don’t know?” he said, running a hand over his face, wicking the sweat away. “I think so, it’s old Serkonan. I only know a little...”

“You never learned the old tongue? How unfortunate. A foreigner in both homes.”

Corvo blinked. He thought about the soft Serkonan accent of his mother, the loose “r” that floated periodically down the streets, incomprehensible and strange.

Gristol Figs is what they’d call people like him…

“ _Crow._ A bit morbid. Don’t you think?” Corvo pictured himself getting cut and eaten, one soft pink slice at a time by ugly, chipped teeth that savored every morsel. “ _Gato_. Would have been a better fit…” 

He swirled his glass staring into its contents and Corvo clench the edge of the table as he stood up. 

“ _Get out_.”

The Outsider looked at him, for the first time truly  _looked_ at him with his awful horrible eyes. Those eyes that sucked you in and tore you up, chilled you like your drafty apartment in New Baptista.

“When will you realize just how little you’ve been able to do, Corvo,” he asked, “acting as the empress’ old, grey mouser?”

And before he could say another word, he was gone, leaving Corvo’s juice glass cracking under the pressure of his frozen drink and all his food miserably, miserably cold.

 


End file.
